IJEMR September 2017 - Vol 7 Issue 09 - Online - ISSN 22492585 Print - ISSN 2249-8672

Startups in India: The Present Scenario

*Dr. Pramod Kumar Agrawal

*Associate Professor & Head (Retd.), Post Graduate Department of Commerce, B.D. College,
Patna (Magadh University, Bodh Gaya)
Foreword:
There are some processes and transformations that are carefully planned and
meticulously executed by a team of professionals in an industry or community. There are others
that are created by a spirit of collective endeavor and a vision. Communities of extraordinary
individuals, bound by a spirit of "Can do", who dare to dream impossible dreams and go out to
make them happen.
In the present paper, mission startup describes what we want to do, what unique
contribution we wish to make toward our clients and other stakehdders, and the way in which
we intend to serve our clients and society.
Keywords: Collective endeavor, impossible dreams
Introduction:
There is a wonderful story about Edmund Hillary, the first man to step foot on Mount
Everest. When asked why he chose to climb the highest mountain in the world, he simply
said, "Because it was there!"
In 21st century, new phenomenon in Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to
Business (B2B) commerce has created opportunities for the rapid development of websites and
portals and saw not only the large Indian firms but also a new generation of start ups in India
gearing up to help the dot com firms.
Startup mission is an initiative to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation in the
country that will drive sustainable economic growth and will generate large scale employment
opportunities. The government through this initiative aims to empower startups to grow
through innovation and design.
In the year 2015 Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence day speech
announced the 'startup India' initiative. The objective was that India must become a nation of
job creators instead of being a nation of job seekers. The Prime Minister formally launched the
initiative on January 16, 2016 from Vigan Bhawan, New Delhi where young Indian
enterprisers in thousands were present to start their journey through startups.
In order to meet the objectives of the initiative, the government has announced an
Action plan that address all aspects of the startup ecosystem. with this action plan, the
government hopes to accelerate spreading of the startup movement from digital/technology
section to a wide arrange of sections including agriculture, manufacturing, social, health care,
education etc. Besides it also intends to spread the movement from existing tier-I cities to
Tier-2 and tier 3 cities including semi urban and rural areas.
The Action plan is divided a cross simplification and hand holding, funding support and
incentives and industry academic partnership and incubation.
Objectives:
There are following objectives behind startups movement -
1. To implement the new ideas and innovations taking place in mind to do something special
in any sphere of life, sector of the economy whether agricultural, manufacturing, health care
or education etc.

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2. To search out the base line where new ideas and innovations could be converted into
reality.
3. To provide employment opportunities to young and talented who are in search of jobs.
4. To follow the guidelines, rules and regulations framed under different laws while running a
new startup business.
5. To become an example for other entrepreneurs in community by doing such activities which
are important from the view point of new products and services and more specific for the
environment.
6. To prove themselves beneficial for the nation as import substitutions and export promotion
units.
7. To make India become a nation of job creators instead of being a nation of job seekers.
Hypotheses
India's entrepreneurial prowess has always been accepted and appreciated globally. The
last few years especially have seen number of initiatives and success stories, boosting startups
and bringing an attitudinal shift towards embracing starting up. However, the genesis of
catapoolt change marker's challange lies in two key things that I felt were still missing from
the ecosystem-
i) The focus on thinking beyond the conventional and really disrupting existing
models to find new idea.
ii) The involvement of communities at large to be part of discovering and supporting
these ideas.
Review of Literature
Three important elements are associated with the startups-Network lies, Trust and
Sharad Vision.
Network ties is described as a collection of "actors" (people, departments or business)
and their strategic links with each other (Johnsen & Jonnsen, 1999)
Trust among exchange partners has a significant impact on the respective firm's
performance by reducing transaction costs and conflicts. Trust is the expectation between two
or more entities i.e. persons and organizations that regular day to day behavior will be honest,
co-operative and predictable based on shared norms. (Fukuyama, 1995)
Shared vision is viewed as individuals having similar values and expectations of
behavior (thorelli, 1986)
Soota & Gopalan (2016) have expressed that there is an entrepreneurial boom in the country
and there is need to simplify the steps of entrepreneurs to help them improve their probability
of success. According to them, the startups need to focus on nurturing a vibrant culture and
sealing up their businesses. The risk is in evitable in every business and the entrepreneurs
have to try their best to reduce those risk.
Business ownership is no longer a male preserve. Women have entered self employment
and business ownership in unprecedented numbers. Statistics suggest that around one
quarter of self employed people in the UK are women (Zalevski & Marriyama, 2010) while in
the USA, women own 40 percent of all privately held businesses (Center for Women's Business
Research, 2009)

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Startups and India:

India is in the third position just behind US and UK and nearly 1400 new starups are
expected by end of 2016 up by 8-10% from last year, revealed the "Indian Startup ecosystem
Maturing 2016" report by Nasscom-ZINNOV.
India has emerged as the third largest startup base and such ventures are poised to
grow 2.2 times to reach 10500 by 2020 despite a perception that the ecosystem in the country
has slowed down in the last year as per the report. Report also finds that Bangaluru, NCR and
Mumbai continue to lead as the major startup hubs in the country.
In terms of vertical growth, investors are looking at domains & health-tech fin- tech,
edu-tech, data analytic B2B commerce with a total funding of approx.$ 4 billion, close to 650
start-ups were funded signifying a healthy growth of the ecosystem.
According to the report, the number of tech startups in India is expected to grow by 10-
12% to over 4750 by the end of 2016. With this impetus, India will become home to over
10500 startups by 2020 employing over 2,10,000 people.
The start up landscape in the country is becoming the epitome of innovation, with
companies bringing out solutions that are aimed at solving locally relevant issues. Nasscom
believes that the contribution by startups have been growing at a rapid rate and the landscape
has a huge potential in terms of business stability, revenue growth and further innovation,
said Nasscom Chairman CP Gurnani.
The report added that there is 40% increase in the number of active incubators and
accelerators in 2016 with impetus from government and corporates. Over 30 new academic
incubators have been established under the governments, "start-up India stand-up India"
initiative in 2016 and tier-II/III cities have established 66% of the new incubations.
The report also reveals an increased interest from student entrepreneurs in 2016 A
growth of 25% has been witnessed in 2016 with over 350 start-ups being founded by young
students.
With regard to investments, the report states that investors are increasingly looking at
opportunities in start-ups in areas other than online retailing.
Sectors where Startups Needed
Here is a brief idea given which explain the sectors where startups movement is needed-
1. Fin-Tech (Financial Technology) - Services include -
i) Lending Services
ii) Payment Services
iii) Remittance Services
iv) Personal Finance and Retail investment.
v) Banking Infrastructure Services
Lending Services Includes -
P2P lending
Crowd funding
Digital Credit
Loan market place
Payment Services Includes -
Payment wallets
Payment gateways
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Payment Solutions.
Personal Finance Services Includes -
Investment
Money Management
2. Railways - Services Includes -
Passengers facilities
Goods Transit Services
Safety & Security
Civic services
Startups and Foreign Supports
In the month of May 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook met with founders of Indian startups
and discussed with them their technologies. These startups were present in the meeting apart
from others.
1 Urban clap Ragav Chandra Home Beauty Treatment yoga
classes, Tutors Hiring plumbers &
carpenters
2 Sweet couch Rajesh Chokhani App. messaging features, online
shopping applications
3 Cynapse Apurva Roy Choudhary Software products maker
4 Invention Labs Ajit Narayanan Speech Therapy app for autistic
children.

Cook met with the founders of the statups, listened them and understands the tech
startup eco system. All the four startups gave demo. Cook was impressed by the way sweet
couch is doing their in app messaging feature.
Apple announced the launch of a 'design and development' startup accelerator in India's
Silicon Valley Bengaluru to support entrepreneur & app developers. Apple witll work closely
with dozens of Indian startups as part of its new accelerator programme. The company is
contemplating a number of options including plans to work with about 15-20 early-stage
startups in each batch of the accelerator programme. It may also work closely with larger
developers and prominent startups such as Zomato*, Snapdeal and Paytm. According to
apple sources, the company is unlikely to invest in startups, instead, it plans to provide
resources, working space, mentorship to app developers and startups.
Apple may have two or three batches of startups every year as part of the accelerator
programme with each batch lasting to 3-5 months.
In spite, Ecommerce based logistics companies - Delivery, GoJavas and Ecom Express
are making a beeline to clinch a partnership business with Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba
who is planning to make entry in India.
* Restaurant Search Platform.
Successful startups
As mentioned earlier, startup ventures are poised to grow 2.2 times to reach 10500 by
2020 despite some problems being faced by startups in few sectors. Still there are a lot of
examples where companies are coming out with different solutions and proving themselves as

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major contributors in societal development. So it is better to examine the performances of few

successful startups in the country.
Table-I
Successful Startups (Education)
Sl. Company Promoter Products Speciality Employment Turnover
No. /Users
1 Motion Nitin Vijay Online from class 6th 18 centres -
Education preparation to 12th in India
(2007) Kota for students for
competitive Olympiad
examinations NTSE, JEE,
medical etc.
2 Byjus (2011) Byju Personalized - 120000 -
funded by Reveendran learning users
sequoria solutions
Capital provider
sofina

3 Simpli learn Krishna Short term For working Trained -

(2012) Kumar online professionals 500000
Kalaari certification to upgrade People so
Capital, May courses their skills far and
field Fund & adding
Helion 20000 every
Capital months
4 Nayi Disha Kartik Developer of - Has signed -
(2012) Aneja educational up with 100
Funded by computer schools.
Ajay Relan games for target 300
pre- schools in a
schoolers year
5 Embibe Aditi personalized - 20 lakh -
(2012) Avasthi learning & students
Kalaari education visited. 20-
Capital, platform 30 %
Light Box monthly
Ventures growth
expected.
6 School guru Shantanu Provider to - Tie ups with -
(2012) Rooj online 14
Funded by courses to universities
family Indian across 10
offices of Universities states.
HNIs both Audio & 150000
Video using
contents platform.
7 Gurrila Dr. Ritesh Investment - - -
ventures
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Innov 8 Mallick in Startups

(2012)
8 Test Book Ashutosh Online - 5 lakh users -
(2013) S. Kumar content with target
Chand, provider to 14 lakh
Shanker prepare for
Narayanan, competitive
Utsav examinations
Somani
9 Vedanta Vamshi Online - 35000 -
(2014) Accel Krishna, Tutoring and users, 300+
Partners & Anand prep. for teachers
Tager Global prakash, competitive
Management Pulkit Jain examinations
10 Super profs Piyush Online - 4 Lakh -
(2014) IDG Agrawal tutorial for students
ventures, Govt. Jobs 200
Kalari teachers
Capital
11 Grey Vijay Online skill Management, Expanding -
campus Pashupaleti development, Quality business in
(2014) training & Management, America &
Hyderabad Awarding Service Asia
Certificates Managements,
Big Data etc.
12 Shop yard Sushant Online - Tieups with
(2014) Rajput & arrangement publishers,
Hyderabad Shrawan of books & distributors,
Kumar exam study Logistic
materials for Partners etc
high level
courses
including
engineering,
Management
etc

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Table-II
Successful Startups (Health & Environment)
Sl. Company Promoter Product/Service Speciality/ Land Mark
No. Benefits
1 Miracle Drink S.M. Raju, Ayurvedic Herbal Alternative Testified
I.A.S. Medicines on medicines for medicines on
Vedic literature health disorders self family
members.
2 Proyurveda Manoj Sah Marketing of Proyurveda is an Probiatics is a
Life Science & Kunal Natural advanced therepy supplement of
Pvt. Ltd. Sah proyurveda made with a gut- friends
Range of combination of bacteria that
healthcare probiotics and naturally occur
products in India Ayurveda, in the intestines
& Abroad Nature's two and Ayurveda is
super powers. an ancient
Indian system of
Medicines)

3 Translumina Gurmit Manufacturing Making heart Stents are rated

Therapeutics Singh Asian Drug attack treatment at par with
LLP (Yukon Chugh & Eluting stent for more accessible American stents
Choice PC) Punita Heart for every Indian in the latest
Sharma Angio plasty
Arora Guidelines of
European
Society of
Cardiology.
4 Citizengage Promita Environment Producing -
and Saxena & tech waste electricity, CNG,
EnCashea Priyank management beautifying parks.
Jain converting into
biogas,
biomethanization
Plants by picking
waste from door
steps
5 F45 India Pradeep Teambased F45 workouts are One workout is
palli fitness health & 18 completely never repeated
experience different systems
that change every
single day.
6 Bhusattva Jainam Promoting Bhusattva Apart from
Kumar Pal organic apparels. Products are using natural
Classy and naturally made organic cotton &
exclusive from onganic silk natural
designer materials, hand fibres blends
garments for woven & Hand like bamboo,
crafted to provide banana milk,
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men &Women. maximum comfort soya, pineapple

and eco friendly. are also used
7 AWP Systems Vinod Harvesting water Air is converted Water generated
Pvt. Ltd. Mishra, from Air into water from air system
Director through has met the
Rays condensation. recommendation
Enterprises Airwater of water
Generators standards set by
convert the Govt. of
suspended water India. Expanded
vapors' in business in
surrounding cities having
atmosphere into 500 & have
pure drinking happy
water. customers.
8 Prity Ritesh Lohia Daily usable Recycle of Customers
International products. Garbage, Waste spread in 36
(Jodhpur) Maferials countries.

Table-III
Successful Startups (other sectors)

Sl. Company Promoter Product/Service Specialty/Benefits Land Mark

No.
1 Bazarkart Shreuj Grocery Portal No distributor or 200 and more
(2014, Delhi) Jalan retailer. Benefit goes orders per day
to customers direct
purchasing from the
companies
2 TAC security Trishnit IT security, - 2 crore turnover
solutions Arora Police Cyber
(2010) Crime Solutions
3 ID Fresh P.C. Idli, Dosa Batter - 100 crore turn
Foods (2006) Mustafa over,
Employment to
1000 plus
people
4 Jazmyroid Sunil Online portal for Purchasing direct Moe then 52
(2012) Delhi Dhingra Automobile from the company brands of the
Parts & and delivering to world
Accessories clients
5 Green India Arun Cost cutting Through Geo- For residential
Building Shenoy and solutions of thermal Air- and corporate
systems Mandar Electricity & conditioning Design buildings.
&services Kaprekar water & Installation
(2009)

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6 Easy Policy Neeraj Online Providing knowledge -

(2011) Agrawal, Insurance regarding good &
Alok bad aspects of
Bhatnagar health & non health
& insurance policies
Divyanshu
Tripathi
7 Telocity Ketan Providing one provide video Job seekers are
(2011) Deewan stop solutions to interview, Pre getting jobs as
companies for screening, Telephone per their profile
appointment interview, final
related interview etc.
procedures.
8 Lets Sidharth Shaving Razor Reform the Shaving -
Shave.com Oberoi, both for men & style and pattern.
(Chandigarh) Founder & women.
CEO
9 Eager Saurabh Pre School To provide little ones Promoter is
Beavers Poddar Segmant a warm, stress free, MBA from
secure and safe Mumbai
environment.
10 India Filings Lionel Offering services Providing best of Promoter is
Charles required for professional services MBA in Airline
starting and to common man. Management He
operating was working in
business US in
Lufthansa
systems. He has
degree in
accounting &
computr
science,
commercial
pilot licence.
11 Bikes 4 Neelesh jain On demand Anyone can take Saving cost &
Every thing logistics services services for any type time of people
on Bikes of logistics services including
business men.
12 Spares Arijit Arranging spare The company offers Expanded
Hub.com Chakravorty parts of Cars parts from 150 plus business in 9
& Tapas brands and cities having
Gupta manufacturers 500 more happy
online. customers.
13 Cluster Steel Shubham Premier Delivery of all types Man power, fair
Khandelwal distribution of steel products and trading,
company of Steel steel accessories courteous
products including building services,
materials marketing
capabilities and
notable team
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work.
14 Sale Bhai Vishwavijay An E-commerce Countless products Original items
Singh market place are delivered from of & from
seller to buyer original places
directly e.g. Alphonso
mangoes from
Ratnagiri
(Regional
Spcialities)
15 Jaadu Inc. Raghav Offers services Trilored support Self funded,
Jerath ranging from helps consumers to value creating
phone recharge, control their lives offline
booking cabs, better. Offers connectivity
ordering food & customized holiday and utility
gifts etc. packages. services

The Homecoming startups

India has for long been hit by brain drain or constant emigration of highly educated and
intelligent people, but of late many of that top talent are returning to the country mostly to
join the Indian startup story. They show their interest in country's booming startup sector.
Executives who are now in their 30s and 40s and had left India about 10 years ago are looking
at returning. According to Uday Chawla, Managing Director at executive search firm
Transearch "These people want either to start their own ventures or be part of the starting eco
system.
The factor luring these top talent back to India is the- (i) promising startup ecosystem (ii)
fuelled by venture capital money, (iii) the government's thrust and finally and (iv) lucrative
offers to these executives.
A look at the following table gives an idea of some recent movements of talented persons
coming back to India.
Table-IV
Sl. Name with Age Left for year Joined Back in
No. India for
1 Vineet Rao US 2000 Microsoft E Commerce
36 base
2 Bharath Reddy, San 2006 - Filipkart in
30 Francisco Bangaluru
Bay
3 Akshay Gulati UK - Amazon -
4 Suvojit Chatterjee US - Google Flipkart
5 Visalakshi Kannan Singapore - Lazada VP Grofers
Group
6 Amba Rish Kenghe US - Google Myntra
Chief
Product
Officer

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Loyalty based startups

Indian entrepreneurs appear to be picking a few loyalty lessons from foreign companies
like Amazon. According to Akhil Saraf, Founder of loyalty rewards- based startup loyalie,
'Amazon Prime is the prime example of how loyalty works and why loyalty still matters'. Till
recently loyalty was considered a function of plain vanilla discounts. Cut prices and be
assured that the customer will come back. Perhaps not any longer, not when every retailer-
online and offline is offering mouth watering deals.
Now it is about privileges perks and making consumer feel more special, says saraf who
started loyalie in September 2015 at Kolkata to help offline businesses engage with their
customers in a more tangible manner. Now he has 7000 registered users and over 110
merchant partners.
A recent global study by UK based collinson group, which focuses on influencing
consumer behavior, points to a sharp drop of 24% in membership of loyalty programmes
among affluent middle-class Indians since 2014. Although discounts and cash backs provide
instant gratification, they do little to drive long term loyalty.
Shaping and influencing consumer behaviour is crucial for marketers to drive revenues
by increasing user engagement. As the new ecommerce norms by the government make it
increasingly difficult for etailers as to lure buyers with discounts, analysts expect a steady
shift of online deal-hunters to loyalty programmers offered by brick-and-mortar players.
Future group of company says that it has seen a double digit jump in membership of its
various loyality programmers. Consumers are not loyal just because of discounts. They
identify themselves with the brand and share a relationship. Future group Big Bazaar Profit
club, loyalty programme, treats consumers like VIPs.
Akanksha Hazari, a Mumbai based startup M. paani, says that Indian consumers are
evolving from being just price conscious to value and service conscious. According to her, the
first step in designing a new version of loyalty programmers is to find out the deficiencies in
the older version. Difficult point redemptions blackout dates, stock outages, annoying or evem
hidden fees were all frustrating features leading to diminishing engagement with consumers.
Hazari cameup with a unique solution: consumers can choose their own rewards. For
instance, a user can redeem her points by buying a product of her choice at any of M. Panni's
affiliated partners. The rewards are not thrust upon them like in the traditional loyality
programmes.

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Table-V
Loyalty Based Startups
S.No Company Promoter Funding Clients Source of Users
. Revenue
1. Qwikcilver Pratap TP Accel Titan, 1%-5% of 4 Lakh Gift
2009 partners, Arvind, Trensection cards issued
Bengaluru Amazon Oberoi so far
Asia
pacific
2 Payback Gaurav subsidiar ICICI Bank, Service and 50 million
India 2010, Khurana y of Future Licence fees
Gurgaon Indian Group,
Express American
express,
make my
trip
3 Brainstrust Girish Boot Aditya Birla, 1-3.5 lakh a 2.5 lakhs
DF 2014, Kumar Strapped Prestige month from
Mumbai Group, GMR clients
Hyderabad
4 In loyal Kunal Boot Oberoi mall, Based on Approx
2014, Mehta Strapped Infiniti mall, transactions 60000
Mumbai Pavillion
mall
5 M. paani Akanksha Blum Vodafone Service fee 35000 (5
2014, Hazari Ventures lakh
Mumbai transaction)
6 Loyalie Akhil Boot Harley Fees 12000- 1000
2015, Saraf Strapped Davidson, 50000 per
Kolkata Superme month from
motors, Clients
Hotel Casa
Fortuna
7 Hashtag Krishi " Di Bella Average 48000
Loyalty Fagwani coffee, monthly Rs.
2015, Harry's Bar 2000
Mumbai & caf,
Sweetish
House Mafia
(Cookies
shop)

Girish Khare, another startup founder says that when he was asked to design a
management programme for Aadyani, the theatre initiative of the Aditya Birla group, he
decided to start from scratch and not revisit the conventional points based loyalty card.
According to him something outstanding is the new acceptable average for modern
consumers.

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Another startup founder, Gaurav Khurna of Payback says that we offers customers an
opportunity to engage a diverse portfolio of partner brands both in- store and online with
options to earn and spend points and avail of rewards. The consumers can pool loyalty
benefits from an extensive list of partners by using one single card, members can earn loyalty
points when they shop at a wide range of different merchants and brands, both offline and
online.
According to new policy guideline for ecommerce entities to maintain a level- playing
field and not influence the sale price of goods on services is a positive step.
Krishi Fagwani founder of Hashtag loyalty says that almost all industries offer a variant
of loyalty schemes to attract new and retain existing customers. The problem is that most of
these schemes offer boring and minimalistic rewards.
Fagwani is thinking for changing the game by introducing experiential rewards which is
adopted by big brands like American express, PepsiCo and Amazon who have adopted
experiential rewards in their loyalty programmers. With just one experiential reward, a
business can set itself apart from the others. The biggest strength of loyalty is creating a long-
lasting association with a business or a brand by offering discounts, cash backs, scratch
cards, assured gifts and points based cards.
The entrepreneur dishes out example of how an experiential award has turned out to be
a game changer for one of his clients. Sweetish House, Mafia, a cookie shop in Mumbai, has a
"5 Minute all you can eat cookie challenge" where customers can save upto 150 points. The
first time a user redeems this reward, it gets recorded by the employees and ends up becoming
a far and engaging experience.
"The irony of customer loyalty is that it is created to make the customers more engaged
with the brand but it ends up putting them in a blind spot", says Kunal Mehta, cofounder of
Inloyal, a Mumbai based loyalty startup. Most of its programmers are meant for the
enlightenment of the retail merchant rather than for the customer.
Startup magic fading - One of the objectives of startups and ecommerce companies is to
provide jobs to jobless. But these days it is observed that Startups in India are giving wrong
signals by withdrawing job offers given to IITs students. It is noticed in the past months that
once the most sought-after for placements, some startups have started withdrawing their job
offers at IITs in Delhi, Mumbai, Roorkee, Guwahati etc. reason behind either shutting down or
closing some operations, funding slowdown, pressure on profitability etc. According to
placement managers at different campuses, companies like Ola Zimply Home Shopping,
Pepper Tap, Flip kart, InMobi, Snapdeal etc. are not keeping commitments either by delaying
the process, by giving future joining dates, stating expansion of business. Basis of withdrawal
of offers are said to be the pressure of investors put on companies to save costs and improve
cash flows.
Looking at the scenario, the heads of placement committees of all IIT's held a meeting
in October 2016 with only one agenda-postponing of joining offers given by ecommerce and
startups companies to students.
A look at the following table reveals the failure of commitment made by startups-

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Table-VI
Startups and their Refusals
Company Nature of work commitment withdrawal with
made with causes
Ola Ecommerce, IIT, Delhi - Poor response
cab Aggregator
Zimply Home Home IIT,Guwahati - Cost cutting and
Shopping Shopping ceasing operations in
certain cities.
Pepper Tap IIT, Delhi Shut Operations
Flipkart Online IIT, Mumbai Backed out after
Shopping registering to visit.
Snapdeal Online IIT Mumbai - Backed out after
shopping registering to visit.
Inmobi Mobile Ad IIT, Chennai - No reason
Platform
Roadrunner Hyper Local IIT, Roorkee - Expansion of Business
Delivery

Startups Losing their Leaders- With the passage of time, startups not even maintaining their
leaders. The movement back from startups to large established companies has started. Several
CXOs from e-commerce and startups are on their way back to large MNCs.The reasons behind
exit are-
i) Lack of innovation in Indian startups and e-commerce companies.
ii) Culture misfit for people who have moved in from traditional companies.
iii) E-commerce Cos that hired in a frenzy are trying to force exits of high cost people.
iv) No visibility on wealth creation as top employees sit on piles of paper money or
ESOPs.
Important among the companies are Flipkart, Jabong, Housing.com, Ola etc.
According to Mr. Kris Lakshmikanth, Chairman & Managing Director at The Head
Hunters India, "there are 100 guys in our database who have come out of e-commerce
companies at middle to senior level who are looking for jobs.
According to Mr. Anshuman Das, Managing Partner at Longhouse Consulting, "about
30% of the senior executives at startups and e-commerce are currently contemplating moving
back to large companies".
Startups and the Work Culture
In a country like India, where there is law for work culture at work place whether it is
business entity or corporate, startups cannot be an exceptional case regarding adoption of
rule of the law. Like other business centres and firms or companies, whether small or big
,startups are also supposed to maintain the work culture at their respective work places and
also to follow the rules set by the government and the supreme court to check sexual
harassments.

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IJEMR September 2017 - Vol 7 Issue 09 - Online - ISSN 22492585 Print - ISSN 2249-8672

Over the past few months, women entrepreneurs and startup employees have been
speaking out on social media about sexual harassment in the startup world. In India, law on
work place sexual harassment came into force in 2013 (Sexual Harassment of Women at Work
Place Prevention, prohibition & Redressal Act). when Supreme Court formulated guidelines on
the same. Work place sexual harassment and gender discrimination is not heard in corporate
India but with startups it seems, there is lack of awareness of the law, an informal work
culture and poor gender diversity complicate matters. Startups offen say they do not have the
band width or financial means to put in place mechanisms to protect women employees.
When startups don't have clear HR policies, it can be a dealbreaker for some investors.
According to Pankaj Saga of Chennai Angels (a start up), "a sexual harassment scandal or
even allegation sent up a red flag. No investor would come close and existing investors are
likely to drop them." So, it is important to pay attention and act with empathy.
Conclusion:
The advent of startups in India has given a lot of opportunities to young talents and
upcoming entrepreneurs to do something positive for the society and the nation. To fulfill the
dreams of our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, Startups have proving themselves a very
creative platform where the entrepreneurs having new innovative ideas can start moving
towards implementing the projects as well as the young talents having skill and desire to join
such organizations providing unique products and services in the community.
No doubt a lot of problems and hurdles have to be faced by the entrepreneurs while on
way to the success but if one is having true and sincere efforts, they will surely achieve the
goal and become an example for others. Startups in spite of some periodical problems are
coming in large members across the country and with the collective efforts they are successful
also. It is presumed that while running the business, entrepreneurs must obey the rules and
regulations framed by the Government.
Readings & References:
1. Centre for women's Business Research (2009), Key facts about women-owned businesses
2008-2009, Washington, DC.
2. Deccan Chronicle, Bengaluru, Oct. 26-27, 2016
3. Fukugama, F., Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity, Hamish Hamilton,
London, 1995.
4. Johnsen R.E. & Johnsen T.E., International Market Development through networks,
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 1999, P. 297-312
5. Lakshya, Dainik Bhaskar, Patna of Various dates between May 2016 to February 2017.
6. Natarajan, ganesh & Kalive, Prameela,' From Start -up to Global Success: The Zensar
Story', Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2016 P. xi, 7, 240
7. Thorelli, H.B., Networks Between market and hierarchies, strategic Management
Journal,. 1986, .p. 37-51
8. The economist, April 8th-14th 2017, p. 55
9. The Economic Times, New Delhi of Various dates in May & June 2016.
10. The Economic Times Magazine of May & June, 2016
11. The Economic Times, startups, June 7, 2016 p. 1-8
12. The Journal of Entrepreneurship, New Delhi Vol. 24, Number-2, September 2015
13. Zelevski, A., & Maruyama, T., SET Women's Enterprise in the U.K., July 2011.

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